Since doing a system upgrade that occurred earlier this weekend, 5/13/2022 when I ran “pacman -Syyu”, I noticed Chromium has a new/different file dialog that was not my normal/default dialog window that I was used to. At first I didn’t mind it as it looked like a normal file browsing GUI and so I tried to save a downloading file to a storage volume outside of the default download folder, Chromium would not save the file it would not start the download and nothing was downloading in the “download manager” page of Chromium. If I save the downloading file to the default folder of Chromium’s setting, it will start the download like you would expect, but selecting any other folder destination will not download any file.
When I open up Firefox, the save/open file dialog is the file manager dialog that I am used to and I can save files to which ever folder location I have selected.
I don’t stray from the default installation of any of my Linux distros I’ve ever installed, and this include my Manjaro install. I grabbed the Manjaro XFCE iso about 2-3 months ago and everything is the way it was from the developer’s configuration of this ISO.
I tried to google search for “arch chromium download manager won’t work” and found some hints that others have had issues like me in the past, there is setting “inode/directory” to the file manager I am using in this case it was set on default to “catfish file search”, I tried “thunar file manager” and it didn’t change anything on Chromium. There was suggestions on changing the mimeapps.list for inode/directory, that had a value of: “thunar.desktop;org.xfce.Catfish.desktop;”, changing this to just “thunar.desktop” or “org.xfce.Catfish.desktop” didn’t change anything, there was also a suggestion on changing the “mimeinfo.cache” for inode, again that didn’t change anything.
I’ve read about how the file manager picker dialog, or something like that, can’t be changed on QT or GTK projects such as Chromium and it is set by the “kdialog” application/program and it will do its auto detect to determine which file manager to use, at least this is how I understand it.
So my question is, how can I get back my old file dialog window for Chromium?
If that is not possible, then how can I get the current file dialog window to save to other directories if I am “stuck” with this file dialog window system.
Thank you for anyone willing to read this long post.
I apologize, I guess it could be the same, but to me the difference is the file manager theme is different the one Chromium has is all white and does not match the default theming of the Manjaro XFCE’s default theme, compared to Firefox it is the same (dark gray with green ascents or something).
Let’s say they are the same GTK file picker/dialog, why is it that I can’t save files with Chromium when I choose a different directory/folder, different from the default directory/folder that is set in chromium? While Firefox works just fine when I do choose a different directory/folder?
I changed that setting from “GTK+” to classic and it doesn’t change anything regarding the theming colors, the dialog window looks exactly the same as the screen shot I uploaded.
This happens with any file type, from zip, cbr, jpeg, pdf, html, etc. I can’t select any directory that differs from the default “Location” settings in Chromium. An odd thing is, I can set the “Location” to any directory I want to set it to and it will download any files to that directory, but if I choose another directory that is not the default “Location” settings it will not save the file.
Now I’m nervous that Google did it again with their updates, without a means to reverse it. I’ll update my Xfce system and see if it happens to me too.
Try toggling the “prompt me for location” setting for your “downloads preference”. Enable-disable-enable-disable a few times to maybe “reset” a broken config file.
I tried that, I set the value to disable asking me where to store the file, and to save it the default “Location”. It download the file like it should.
I re-enabled the ask to save each file, and selected another directory that differs from the default “Location” setting, it fails to download any files.
But I found an odd quirk about the download dialog window, if I choose a different directory and then select the “create new folder” and then save the file into that new folder within this different directory the file will save into that directory/folder.
In the meantime, try a new Chromium profile with no extensions, fresh profile folder. See if it works like normal. (Just be careful not to accidentally delete your current profile, since it holds all your bookmarks, settings, and extensions.)
In fact, to be safe, make a backup copy of your entire ~/.config/chromium folder.
I tried the default “guest” profile and that had the same download file picker dialog GUI as mentioned before, same issue with selecting different directory to save downloading file as described before.
I created a new profile and that too had the same issue I’ve describe with the “guest” profile.
I ran a fresh process of Chromium in my terminal and tried to download any file and saved it in another directory, there was no output to the terminal when the file fails to download. I tried to download a file into the default “Location” directory and it too had nothing displayed on the terminal.
I decided to check the Task Manager’s “identify an open window by clicking it” tool and clicked on a Chromium open “save file” dialog and Task Manager pointed that it was an “xdg-desktop-portal-gnome” process. I tried that with Firefox’s open “save file” dialog window for downloading a file and Task Manager pointed to Firefox’s process instead.
So I searched on Google for “manjaro chromium xdg-desktop-portal-gnome” and found some links to people having issues with the “save-as” dialog not coming up at all: 'Save as' Dialog not showing on Chrome and Telegram (#4803) · Issues · GNOME / gtk · GitLab, the solution for this person was to downgrade xdg-desktop-portal-gnome. I would have liked to try that but in the “Add/Remove Software” I can’t seem to find older version of this to even try it. They also link to a reddit post about the same issue: https://www.reddit.com/r/gnome/comments/tn8m2x/save_as_dialogue_not_showing_on_chrome_and/i21huqj/, and how to replicate it and also get terminal output of xdg-desktop-portal-gnome, and I did that to see what happens when I try to save a file in a directory outside of the default “Location”.
When it “fails” trying to save a file, does it just not let you continue? Does is flash and then revert to the dialog window? Is the button greyed out?
Using “echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE” it says I am using X11.
After I select a different directory from the default “Location” and click on “save”, the dialog window goes away and the progress for the downloading file does not start and the download page (ctrl + j) does not show any progress or failure or anything of the file being downloaded at all.
Installed google-chrome from the “add/remove software” and opened up google-chrome and tried to download a file, same behavior occurs with this browser also. It’s the same white GTK file picker GUI, same behavior of not saving a file in a directory that is not the default “Location”, turning on and off the “ask where to save each file” does not resolve the issue I’ve been describing.
So its not just me!
Thanks for linking me to another issue that was brought up by another user. And thank you so much for trying to help me out with this issue.
I guess its just a waiting game for them to update GTK file picker.
Which, once again, I don’t understand the need for these packages? Chromium behaves find without them, under Xfce and KDE, in which it uses the native KDialog or GTK file picker, depending on the environment, without any issues, and with full theme consistency and shortcut integrations.
I’ll update my Xfce system and see if it happens to me too.